Texas Tech University student Gilde Flores has always considered music his hobby, but started to make it his career in 2007. Around the time the senior human development and family studies major entered Texas Tech, his career began to take off.

Flores started playing music and joining bands when he was 14. His father, who is a musician, taught Flores the basics of several instruments, and his mother and stepfather bought him his first guitar. His desire to learn other instruments is what led to touring the U.S. with bands that were signed to major record labels, after which he became a sound engineer at Don Caldwell Productions. It was then he decided to become a music producer and composer.

“I love the creativity and freedom of expressing what you can’t really say, but feel,” Flores said. “Music has a way of moving people in their own unique ways, and to be able to contribute to motivating someone else’s emotions is a great feeling. I mostly enjoy the fact that something gets manifested from nothing and although it is intangible, it can truly be felt.”

Through extensive networking, Flores licensed his music to several networks, including MTV, Bravo and E! Network. He now mainly works solo and creates custom music for television, advertisements, film, radio, movie and video game trailers, and as a recording artist.

He composed music for “Wolverine,” which he said is one of his most prized pieces of work. He also has produced music for “Shahs of Sunset” and “Keeping up with the Kardashians,” which he worked on with George Mathews, owner of SMASH COAST Music Publishing and vice president of licensing and creative services for Mach 1 Music in Los Angeles. Mathews also worked on various other products with Flores in the more than four years the pair has worked together.

“In the time that I’ve known Gilde, he’s gone from producing background music for television shows to scoring indie films, composing musical scores for major commercial brands, video game manufacturers and motion picture trailers,” Mathews said. “I still marvel at his growth and dedication. I literally watched him teach himself to compose classical music for film and video games.”

Flores composes his music using his own preproduction setup and sends the track to a songwriter for lyrics and vocals before pitching the music. He records himself playing different instruments depending on the type of project. Flores said he generally works with music supervisors and advertisement firms to receive opportunities. As of December, he has composed and recorded music for a movie and video game trailer album. Examples of Flores’ work can be found on his website.

Flores said his plan is composing music for films and video games and ultimately moving to California. He never formally studied music and instead is teaching himself orchestration and music theory to accomplish his goals. He also wants to attend graduate school to become a licensed counselor. In this too, he hopes to incorporate music.

“Flores has the potential to be one of the biggest composers around. He is talented and has a high level of humility, which is very rare. Flores is a good person, husband, father and friend before being a great musician,” Mathews said.

Flores’ journey has not been traditional. He started touring directly out of high school, resulting in an education gap before attending South Plains College and transferring to Texas Tech. He continues to balance school, music and freelance work, and his family. He is married with three children – one son and two daughters.

“I can truly say I don’t regret any part of it,” he said. “Instead, I find it’s helped me gain another level of insight and technique I will carry forward in both my academic and music career. This experience has helped me become more determined, focused and passionate, and has instilled a sense of integrity. I push harder to set an example for my children.”

More than 20 wine marketing students from Texas Tech University are mixing up cocktails, using wine instead of whiskey, gin or rum, hoping to create a gold medal combination.

Natalia Velikova’s wine marketing class is competing against students from Sonoma State University to create the best wine cocktail. It’s not a typical ingredient in cocktails, but the competitors are hoping to change that.

“Many wine countries around the world have a healthy culture of wine cocktails, but except for wine spritzers, the U.S. hasn’t really shown much creativity around wine mixology,” Velikova, associate director of the Texas Wine Marketing Research Institute, said.

Velikova, also an associate professor in the Restaurant, Hotel and Institution Management (RHIM) program, said she and Sonoma State professor Liz Thach created the competition while attending the Wine Industry Financial Symposium last year. Concerned about the inroads craft beer and spirits were making in wine’s market share, they wanted a way to make wine more hip.

Natalia Velikova

The students loved the idea, Velikova said.

“They just never thought about wine being in a cocktail,” she said. “Usually wine is a separate product. You just drink a glass of wine.”

Justine St. Cyr, who is in Velikova’s class, said she and her partner discussed a chocolate winetini and a cherry wine Dr Pepper before landing on their cocktail of choice – a combination of peach, ice wine and whiskey that channels the experience of honey whiskey. She didn’t want to give too much away, but she’s excited about the coming weeks of experimentation and presentation.

“I have been ecstatic about the project since I heard about it,” St. Cyr said. “I really enjoy wine, so helping it make a comeback in the form of cocktails is definitely something I can get behind.”

The Texas Tech students will submit recipes, creative names, pictures and video of them creating the cocktails. They will present their cocktails the first week of April, and each class will vote on its top three. Those six wine cocktails will be judged by a panel of experts that includes two master sommeliers each from Texas and California.

The results will be released mid-April, and the cocktail recipes will be featured on the new Wine Mixology blog.

Jennifer Harris got the call from “Jeopardy!” headquarters in October. She was given a date, a hotel and told what to wear.

Harris, a human development and family studies doctoral student in the College of Human Sciences at Texas Tech University, appeared on an episode of the popular game show that aired in December. She finished second, losing to the four-time returning champ and winning $2,000, but Harris valued her time and experience with the show.

“I didn’t win, but it was still a lot of fun,” she said. “I got to be on TV, bring my family out to California and play on a show that I’ve watched since I was little. Being on that set, getting to know the other contestants and being able to watch the show and know I was there is the coolest part of everything.”

In January 2014 Harris took an online test to determine her eligibility to be on the show. She had 50 minutes to answer 60 questions, and her acceptance was based on the speed and accuracy of her answers. In March she got a call from the show’s headquarters in Los Angeles asking if she would be interested in an in-person interview.

“The first interview was in Raleigh, North Carolina,” she said. “I have family there, so I said, ‘yeah, that sounds good.’”

The in-person interview is a series of tests, including general knowledge, camera appeal and the contestant’s ability to work under pressure such as using the buzzer or working in a time crunch. After the interview Harris was told she would hear from the show in 18 months and if after that time she hadn’t received a call she could reapply. In October Harris got the call and was told her recording would be in November.

Preparing to compete on “Jeopardy!” wasn’t easy. From the time she was told she would be on the show to the recording, Harris had only four weeks. With the myriad of topics and questions that can be asked, studying for the show was time-consuming.

“I didn’t prepare all that much,” she said. “It’s hard because you don’t know what clues are going to come up. I just bought some books about things I knew came up often – presidents, Greek mythology and Shakespeare. Studying was difficult because I was taking some intense courses and last semester was my first semester teaching.”

Harris is working on a study involving children’s reactions to becoming siblings.

Harris’ busy schedule prevented her from setting aside much time for preparation. As a doctoral candidate she has been working with her adviser on a study involving children’s reactions to becoming siblings, she recently started teaching and she has heavy coursework, but having watched the show since she was a child meant she didn’t have much studying to do. Harris was ready for a wide variety of questions with only a few outliers about which she wasn’t quite sure.

“Getting the order of the U.S. presidents was hard, and I was never big on Shakespeare except in high school,” she said. “I knew those were common topics so I just made a couple flash cards, but that was it.”

Having prepared for questions, Harris readied herself to go to LA. She said her only real trouble came from deciding what to wear.

“They give very strict guidelines for what to wear,” she said. “No patterns, no light colors and no blue, or else you won’t look good on TV. That was the only part of the process that was an inconvenience for me, everything else was just exciting. I booked a room in Los Angeles the night before the recording. The morning of, I met up with the other contestants; we got on a bus and headed to the studio.”

Once there, Harris was put into make-up, given a practice round and began the waiting game.

“They do a whole week of filming in a day, so five games in about as many hours. They put our names on a flash card and drew a couple out of the stack and that was who played in that game. They picked two for Monday, Tuesday and then Wednesday and that was my day.”

Harris played well, but lost to Vaughn Winchell who went on to become a five-day champion. While much of the knowledge she gained isn’t transferable to her day-to-day life as a doctoral candidate, Harris is confident the effort and time she put into the show was worth it.

“For me it was all about the experience. I didn’t win, but it was still incredible to be able to go to LA, be on TV and share the moment with my family.”

Saving $10 a week for a year is enough for a plane ticket from Lubbock to Jamaica. Saving $20 a week for a year is enough for textbooks and school supplies for a year in college. Saving $5,000 a year starting at age 22, earning a 6 percent return until age 65, will provide almost $1 million for retirement.

The powers of saving and compound interest are behind America Saves Week, an annual event that runs Monday through Saturday (Feb. 23-28) and encourages people of all ages to start saving, keep saving or increase contributions to savings or wealth-building accounts like 401(k)s or individual retirement accounts (IRAs).

Professors from Texas Tech University’s acclaimed Department of Personal Financial Planning and coaches from Texas Tech’s student-run financial help program Red to Black weighed in on how best to save, particularly for people who aren’t making much money or who don’t already have a habit of saving.

Make saving money easy

Pay yourself first. Put 10-15 percent of each paycheck into savings. Then make a budget/spending plan on what remains.

Set up automatic deductions from either your paycheck or your checking account to go into savings. If you don’t have to think about it, then setting money aside doesn’t seem like a sacrifice.

Leave it alone

To save for an emergency fund, create an online savings account and have money automatically transferred a couple days after you get a paycheck. If you do this at a different bank, you can create a 2-day buffer to transfer the funds back to checking if you get tempted to spend it. This buffer can provide a valuable tool to avoid impulse buys.

Don’t use your long-term savings as an emergency bank account.

Set up automatic payroll deductions to build an emergency fund.

Plan ahead – way ahead

Contribute to a matching 401(k) – instant 50-100 percent return. The savings are deducted up front so there’s no chance to spend it, and when you take advantage of the employer match, it is free money.

Defer Social Security until 70.

Be careful about borrowing from your retirement plan just because you can.

Don’t cash out your retirement plan when you change jobs, move it to an IRA and avoid the taxes and extra 10 percent penalty if younger than 59 ½ years.

Pay attention to where your money goes

Download the Mint app. With Mint it’s easy to make and track your budget, as well as set aside some money for short-term and long-term financial goals.

Plan ahead: Know your big expenses for the semester and plan for them so you’re not caught off guard and have to use credit or loans.

Buy a change jar that tracks how much money you have in it. This can motivate you to save all your spare change.

Check your credit card or bank statement regularly and compare your monthly savings to your goal. Reward yourself if you are doing well or make an extra effort to save if you are falling behind your goal.

Don’t forget to budget some fun money. Saving is very important, but so is having fun.

Start small, have a reason and build on small successes with bigger success. Don’t try save too much too quickly.

Even when you think you can’t save anything, start small. Open a savings account at your bank, attach it to your checking account so in emergencies, funds will transfer from your savings to your checking account. Then have just $5 each week or each month drafted automatically to your savings account.

When you’ve noticed you haven’t missed that $5, after the first few months, start saving $10. Then set a goal to have $500 to $1,000 saved and before you know it, you have an emergency fund. Then you can begin saving for retirement and other goals.

Again, the trick is to start small with something you can achieve in a short time frame that you can then build other successes on. The first success may be to have enough in your savings account to pay for an unexpected doctor visit, car repair or home repair.

Slowly building a habit of saving for specific needs, in this case for an emergency fund, keeps you from spending more than you have to on credit card interest and builds a savings habit or a “savings muscle” so saving for what you want gets easier each day.

Pay attention to where your money goes.

Don’t pay too much

Review insurance coverage. You may find you are paying for more than you need or that you can save money by increasing your deductibles. Ensure you have adequate savings in an emergency fund before you raise those deductibles too high.

For people who have jewelry, art or collectibles: When was the last time you had your precious items appraised? The last five years have seen gold and diamond prices skyrocket. The insurance company probably will not automatically increase your scheduled personal property values unless you provide updated appraisals. Don’t get caught with old appraisals at claim time or you will be digging into your pocket to replace those items you cherish.

Start your holiday shopping now, well before the season starts.

Don’t go to the grocery store when you are hungry, and make sure you take, and stick to, your list.

If there is a bad habit you want to break (smoking, drinking, too many Starbucks lattes) then put the money into savings each week that you would normally spend on the item. Skip two lattes a week and you can put away $520 annually!

As a topic, obesity has been ever-present in Nikhil Dhurandhar’s life for as long as he can remember.

His father is considered the father of obesity practice in the Indian medical community, and when he went to medical school, Dhurandhar knew his passion was in obesity treatment.

“I often saw the difficulties that people suffering from obesity face and how quacks take them for a ride,” he said. “I pondered about what could be done for them.”

Dhurandhar, who recently became the first chairman of the newly created Department of Nutritional Sciences, found career success in treating obesity but was frustrated because his patients were unsuccessful in keeping the weight off. He kept seeing the same patients going through the same cycle of losing and gaining weight. Although there were a few individual success stories, on the whole the results were less than optimal.

That question became his cause célèbre, taking his family from India to North Dakota to Texas Tech studying chickens and investigating viruses as one possible cause of obesity. He continues this research while leading a department with several disparate areas of research.

“There is much more to nutrition than obesity,” he said. “Also, there is more to obesity than nutrition. Both are true.”

Asking Questions About Obesity

Dhurandhar took a hiatus from his medical practice to come to the United States in the 1980s for a master’s degree in nutrition, then returned to Bombay, India, for a doctorate in biochemistry. While there he heard a lecture from S.M. Ajinkya, a well-known veterinary pathologist, who talked about an avian virus killing thousands of chickens a day. These chickens died fat instead of emaciated.

Dhurandhar wondered how chickens infected with a deadly virus could be gaining weight.

“I reasoned, if a bird dies of a viral infection it should have no fat, and you’re describing plenty of fat,” Dhurandhar remembers asking. “Is this virus making those chickens fat?

He did. Dhurandhar performed three experiments with this adenovirus, the first two with chickens and the third involving humans. He found that, after injecting chickens with the virus, they gained weight in just a few weeks.

While he couldn’t inject humans with the virus for ethical reasons, he obtained blood samples from patients who came into his clinic for obesity treatment and discovered that about 20 percent of the patients had antibodies for the virus, which meant they’d been infected at some point. The three experiments indicated this virus did cause obesity in animals and humans infected with it.

The studies showed another, less expected, relationship. Dhurandhar said typically symptoms like high blood sugar, high cholesterol and high triglycerides accompany obesity. However, both the chickens and the humans who’d had the virus were obese but had low cholesterol and low triglycerides, suggesting an association between the virus and a patient’s metabolic health.

“When we had three experiments back to back I was sold on this concept,” he said.

Pioneering the Field of Infectobesity

Selling the concept to others turned out to be a much bigger challenge. Although this field, which he called infectobesity – obesity of infectious origin – is well-established now, 20 years ago this research flew in the face of prevailing wisdom.

Previously, the cause of obesity was limited to food choices and inactivity.

The cause of obesity, according to all the key players, was limited to two things: eating too much and exercising too little. Today, the American Medical Association and other organizations have declared obesity a disease, and the mindset is changing. Twenty years ago scientists weren’t looking for theories or viruses; they had calorie counts.

This made finding a U.S. lab to support Dhurandhar’s research in viruses and obesity difficult. Dhurandhar sent letters and made phone calls to research labs throughout the United States, looking for someone interested in his research. When no one responded favorably, he took a postdoctoral fellowship in any area, ending up at North Dakota State University in Fargo. For two years he studied the biochemistry of sunflower pectin enzymes and wrote hundreds of letters seeking a lab that would allow him to engage in researched related to infections and obesity.

After one year and 11 months, after he and his wife decided to return to India and secured their son’s school tuition in Bombay, he got a call from a researcher at the University of Wisconsin inviting Dhurandhar to join his lab.

Once there, he found he couldn’t import the Indian adenovirus he’d originally experimented with, so he picked up the catalog to find a different virus. There were 50 different viruses. Going with his gut, he picked No. 36 and replicated his Indian experiments.

“The very first experiment showed the human adenovirus Ad36 fattened chickens but reduced their cholesterol and triglycerides, just like the Indian virus,” he said. “Ad36 clicked.”

He replicated the experiment in a number of different animal models including rats, mice and monkeys, with the same results. Over time, the scientific and medical communities accepted Dhurandhar’s conclusions, and the field of infectobesity was born. His research also contributed to the realization that obesity is more complicated than overall caloric intake.

“In my opinion the word obesity is sort of misleading,” he said. “The actual word should be obesities because there are so many different types.

“There are multiple contributors to the obesity epidemic. We generally tend to focus on eating too much and not moving enough.”

Significance

Today Dhurandhar’s research is split between obesity and diabetes, both related to this obesity-causing virus. He applied the evidence-based association between the virus and lower blood sugar and cholesterol to diabetes, of which high blood sugar is a symptom. He is working to isolate the protein in the virus that improves metabolic numbers so it can be administered to diabetics to lower their blood sugar.

As chairman, Dhurandhar will promote 16 labs focused on different aspects of nutrition.

He hasn’t left the field of obesity research, though. Dhurandhar believes that because some cases of obesity are caused by a virus, researchers can create a vaccine for this virus, which could prevent this type of obesity.

“Why all of this is important is because today we have only a blanket treatment of obesity, regardless of the cause,” he said. “We tell people to eat less and move more, in some rare cases use drugs and in rarer cases use surgery. That’s what we’ve got. You mostly don’t consider your various causes of obesity in any of these treatments. That may be why we’re getting limited success.

“If we want to improve success, perhaps we should have cause-specific treatment. And how can you have cause specific treatment if you don’t know what the causes are? Hence, we need a better and clearer understanding of the contributors of obesity.”

Departmental Direction

For most of his career, Dhurandhar had time to focus on obesity but little else. As his research evolved, he became a diabetes expert. As chairman of the Nutritional Sciences department, he gets to focus on promoting and administering 16 different labs focused on different aspects of nutrition.

Dhurandhar came to Texas Tech from Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University. He wants to continue his research here, but he also wants the opportunity to interact with the community and other researchers outside of his field.

“It’s attractive to me to work with students, faculty and researchers from our departments and others on issues of nutrition and obesity and collectively advance research, training and understanding in this field,” he said. “That’s what I always wanted to do.

“We are mapping so many areas. What that does is allow us to cover a large territory and collaborate with each other.”

He is the first chairman of this department, which College of Human Sciences Dean Linda Hoover created in September when she separated the Department of Nutrition, Hospitality and Retailing into Nutritional Sciences and the Department of Hospitality and Retail Management.

“Dr. Dhurandhar is uniquely qualified to lead our new department, as he has had significant administrative experience and a strong record of collaboration with colleagues in fields related to nutrition,” Hoover said. “In addition, he has mentored a number of new scientists, so our new faculty will directly benefit from his guidance. I know Dr. Dhurandhar will provide strong leadership to our new Department of Nutritional Sciences and our academic programs. Based on all of these factors, his efforts will enable the department to increase contributions to the field of nutrition.”

Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake and the stars of “You Got Served” led Sven Saaretalu on a circuitous route to Lubbock.

When Saaretalu, now a doctoral student in personal financial planning at Texas Tech University, was a teenager living on Saaremaa, an island off the coast of Estonia, he was a break dancer. He wasn’t focused on much else but “wiping the floor,” as he called the style of dancing – spinning on his head, back flips, the worm. It was sort of a macho style, he said, designed to show off the dancer’s strength.

“I thought dancing up was for girls,” Saaretalu said. “I didn’t dance up. I didn’t even know how to dance standing up.”

Not until he trained in hip-hop dance– and was terrible at it – did he turn his sights to Hollywood. He spent hours practicing until he wasn’t terrible, he won European championships and he was accepted into California State University-Northridge, conveniently located a few miles from the studio where dancers for Justin Timberlake, the King of Pop and all the popular dance movies train.

Then Saaretalu hurt his back. During his year of recovery, his dance contacts had moved on, all the tours and music videos had full casts and Michael Jackson had died.

“It felt like I missed the train,” Saaretalu said. “It was gone. That was a horrible feeling.

“I put all my eggs in one basket, and then this basket fell and broke all my eggs.”

He moved to Plan B – a finance degree. From there, he applied for the graduate Personal Financial Planning (PFP) program at Texas Tech. Today, he’s traded in the baseball cap for slacks and a tie and the rhythmic dance moves for teaching an undergraduate PFP course. It’s now Plan A, and he is all in.

“I want to be happy in life. I want to be happy with what I do,” he said. “If you want to be happy and be good at what you do, you’ve got to work hard. Right now is the time to focus on this field, to do the best I can and give everything.”

An Estonian Teenager

Saaretalu was 15 when his dance group trainer sent him to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, for a lesson with the choreographer for Aaliyah, an American R&B singer who died in a plane crash in 2001. He didn’t want to go, as he was not into that type of hip-hop, but he went so their group would be represented.

He went through the training, which included choreography to two hip-hop songs from the early 2000s. The accomplished break dancer found himself in an unusual position – not being good at it.

“I was awful,” he said. “I didn’t hear the music correctly, I was moving to the wrong rhythm. I was horrible.”

Even though Saaretalu went into the training not wanting to try this new style of dancing, he was bothered that he was so bad at it. He set a goal to at least be average and practiced in the dressing room of his mother’s clothing store. After a month, he took his practice to the studio where he trained for break dancing.

Where is Estonia? (Click to enlarge)Courtesy: By NuclearVacuum via Wikimedia Commons

Once his trainer discovered Saaretalu’s newfound passion, he put the teenager to work dancing hip-hop. For his part, Saaretalu spent every night at the studio, sometimes practicing until 2 or 3 a.m., and memorized moves from music videos and TV shows like “The Wade Robson Project” on MTV. While walking home in the early morning, he dreamed about learning from Robson, who choreographed for Britney Spears and ‘N Sync; Marty Kudelka, who choreographs for Justin Timberlake; and Dave Scott, the choreographer from “You Got Served.”

Saaretalu focused on dancing, except for a short stint after he discovered parkour, an exercise in which people try to move across spaces as efficiently as possible.

“That hobby didn’t last me for too long because I jumped from my third floor balcony and I broke my leg,” Saaretalu said. “That kind of put a stop to my dancing.”

In the year he spent recuperating, he still spent hours at the studio listening to music and envisioning doing the moves to each rhythm. When his leg healed he was dancing again, this time in competitions. Saaretalu’s small group won a world championship in Germany in 2006, and he won a solo competition at a European championship in Austria the next year. He also was a three-time solo champion of an international dance competition in Estonia.

All his dreams were put on hold when he joined the military, a requirement for Estonian men. While the military got him into excellent physical shape, it didn’t move him toward his dance goals.

“The problem with that is you can’t really practice any of your hobbies while you’re there,” Saaretalu said.

After completing his military time, he applied to and was accepted to CSU-Northridge. He moved to southern California, registered for classes and found a place to live.

“My mind was like ‘OK, I’ll study, but that’s going to be my Plan B,’” he said.

Coming to America

Saaretalu didn’t speak much English when he arrived, but he knew enough to find Millennium Dance Complex, a well-known studio where dancers and choreographers of the stars danced.

“When I was at Millennium, I was looking around the dance floor and saw so many people that I saw on TV,” he said. “It was a little bit intimidating at first. I felt like a nobody, but they approached me and invited me to join their practices.”

Saaretalu found inspiration in entertainers like Michael Jackson and Justin Timberlake.

At the time, Jackson was hiring dancers for his tour, Timberlake was looking for dancers for a music video, and the scene was hot for young, aspiring dancers. At one point Saaretalu was filmed with several of Timberlake’s dancers, a moment he said was the highest point he’d reached in his career. With only a student visa and no agent, however, he couldn’t get auditions and he didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer and change his visa to allow him to work in the arts. He didn’t want to ask his parents for the money, since they thought most his time was spent studying, not dancing.

“All of those things added up and kind of pushed me down a little bit,” he said.

His difficulties didn’t end with legal wrangling. Saaretalu suffered a minor back injury in the military, and between the high physicality of his dancing and weightlifting he did to keep his body in Hollywood dancer shape, he found himself with a herniated disc. He said the doctor told him to stop dancing for at least six months.

“I said, ‘I don’t know if I can do that. I have a career,’” Saaretalu said. “He told me no, you have to take that break if you want to heal. Otherwise you’ll get worse and maybe you won’t be able to dance at all.”

After a year of recovery, he returned to Millennium. He was rusty after not dancing. Gone were the dancers who had embraced his work, the roles he’d prepared for long filled. His years of work felt wasted.

Saaretalu said his darkest moment came when he stopped at a local grocery store for a soda. In his pre-injury days he frequently stopped at a store around the corner from Millennium to get a soda and relax. After a bad day of dancing he decided to get a soda there, thinking it would remind him the old days and motivate him. When he turned the corner, he found a closed sign on the door. The store had moved.

He remembered sitting on the front steps of the now-empty building as reality hit: his dancing career was over before it really got started. He was 24 years old.

Turning Plan B into Plan A

Saaretalu was still enrolled at CSU-Northridge, though he hadn’t exactly been diligent in his studies. He turned his efforts to his education, trying to get his GPA up and joining the speech and debate team. He also got a job, after several months of trying, as a building manager.

“I don’t even think I had a suit,” he said.

The job provided Saaretalu with steady income for the first time in his life, a feeling he enjoyed. His next phase in life continued when a business professor told him about an informational seminar on financial planning. He could keep his major and prepare for the Certified Financial Planning exam. He wasn’t sure what financial planning was or how to do it, but he signed up, in part because the professors helped him register early, ensuring he got the classes he needed instead of waiting and hoping with the rest of the students.

John Gilliam, Michael Finke and Bill Gustafson

Saaretalu found financial planning to have more in common with dancing than he thought. He studied until the work made sense, staying up late and practicing as much as he could.

“Everything was brand new,” he said. “I kept taking those classes. I didn’t do the best, and I didn’t do the worst.

“I knew I liked financial planning, but I wasn’t that good at it.”

As graduation approached and he considered his options, he got a call from Texas Tech professor and doctoral program co-director Michael Finke. John Gilliam, an associate professor of personal financial planning, had seen Saaretalu compete at a financial competition and was impressed with his performance. Saaretalu and his partner came in second, after Texas Tech. Gilliam said he and the students approached the CSU-Northridge team and talked up Texas Tech to them. Then Gilliam returned to Lubbock and talked up Saaretalu to Texas Tech.

“He recommended Sven to me as a potential doctoral student and I watched a video of the competition online,” Finke said. “He was confident, understood financial planning and was a great speaker.”

Part of his role in the PFP program is to find and recruit students for the doctoral program, Finke said, so when he realized Saaretalu would be an asset, he recruited him. Saaretalu visited the campus in November 2013 before starting class full-time in the fall.

He’s teaching a PFP course, which is much different from teaching a dance class, and is deep into his Plan A. He’s studying hard not only for him, he said, but also because he doesn’t want to let down his family, the professors who got him here, the other students he worked with and mentors he had throughout his life. His goals include graduation, supporting his family and contributing to his profession, which associate professor Bill Gustafson said he is doing.

Sven found out PFP had more in common with dancing than he thought.

“Sven is an amazingly diverse young man with European cultures and sensibilities, always with a warm smile, always with a sharp intellect with exceptional quantitative skills,” Gustafson said. “Put that with his unique dancing ability and you have a doctoral student who will be a dynamic and impactful faculty member in personal financial planning.”

Saaretalu has taken the lessons he learned from dancing and the military and put them toward his career.

“It doesn’t matter how physically strong you are,” Saaretalu said. “It’s how mentally strong you are that helps you succeed in life. You have to be strong enough not to give up.

“Sometimes in life you may have to figure out your Plan B or C.”

For now, dancing is part of his past – mostly.

“I don’t dance anymore,” he said. “I still have some skills, so if I’m challenged enough I guess I can break some moves.”

But he hasn’t entirely left it behind either.

“Sven also had an online video from his performance at the European dancing championships,” Finke said. “Somehow the word got out and the rumor is that this has contributed to Sven’s popularity as an instructor.”

]]>http://today.ttu.edu/2015/01/doctoral-student-hangs-up-dancing-shoes-for-personal-financial-planning/feed/0Ask the Experts: How To Make And Keep New Year’s Resolutionshttp://today.ttu.edu/2015/01/ask-the-experts-how-to-make-and-keep-new-years-resolutions/
http://today.ttu.edu/2015/01/ask-the-experts-how-to-make-and-keep-new-years-resolutions/#commentsThu, 01 Jan 2015 15:58:50 +0000Heidi Tothhttp://today.ttu.edu/?p=81349

Lose weight. Save money. Stop smoking. What habit are you starting or stopping in 2015?

Millions of people will make New Year’s resolutions today and, if history is any indication, abandon them by the third week of January. For those who are serious about making changes, however, actually losing weight, saving money or quitting smoking is possible.

George Comiskey, an instructor of addiction disorders and recovery studies, and Cynthia Dsauza, an assistant professor of community, family and addiction services, weighed in on ways to keep New Year’s resolutions beyond Jan. 15.

What are the most common resolutions?

CD: The most common New Year’s resolutions can be broken up into four major categories: health, personal finance, relationships and self-growth. Resolutions dealing with health and wellness include losing weight, getting fit, drinking less, quitting smoking and eating healthier. People also look at their finances and make resolutions to save more, spend less, get out of debt or get better jobs.

For many people, working on their personal relationships is another area of attention during this time. People want to make more time for their family and friends, work on broken relationships or foster new ones.

George Comiskey

Finally, people are motivated by stress-reducing activities and often want to make more time for personal growth. These could include learning a new skill, reading or listening to music more, engaging in service work or travelling to new places.

What are the most common reasons people abandon their New Year’s resolutions?

CD: It comes down to their thinking. Something that negatively affects people is “all-or-none” thinking, where people look at their resolutions in two categories: keeping or breaking them. This level of rigidity is discouraging when someone has a slip-up, which is common when trying to change a long-standing behavior. It leads to the “the snowball effect,” where a minor lapse in behavior becomes a major relapse and leads to totally giving up on the resolution.

People need to see the setbacks for what they are – expected bumps in the road – and keep monitoring progress, no matter how small. People do the exact opposite, getting tunnel vision and forgetting to celebrate victories along the way.

If people set realistic goals, their motivation will come from highlighting the triumphs. Further, having a specific plan on how to get there provides a road map to guide the way. Finally, we often make resolutions because we feel “less than,” but if our motivation to change is to make our lives better (not because mom said something about your weight at Christmas dinner or because cousin Brian makes so much more money than you do), we would be less likely to break our resolutions.

GC: People often aren’t able to accomplish their resolutions because of lack of support, their goals are too extreme or they get back into the old routine once the new year starts. Other possibilities include poor time management, financial obstacles to success or giving up too easily.

What steps can people take to change their habits?

Cynthia Dsauza

CD: It’s important to focus on one resolution and set realistic, specific goals. For example: losing weight is not a specific goal. Losing 10 pounds in 90 days is more specific. Don’t think of your resolution as a temporary change in your life. Think about it as a long term change and do something, no matter how small, every day to work toward it.

Having an accountability buddy is more helpful than you think; find someone who knows you well and will hold you accountable. When we learn how to celebrate the small changes, we motivate ourselves to keep going. A celebration can be anything from taking the time to appreciate how much progress we have made to buying ourselves a small gift as a reward for our efforts.

Becoming more mindful of our physical, mental and emotional states can help us achieve our goals dramatically. Doing this helps us realize when we are being triggered to break our resolutions, and catching our lapse before it happens is winning half the battle.

Finally, it’s important to remember creating long-lasting change in our lives should be a positive experience. If we take ourselves too seriously, we will not have the motivation (or self-esteem) to recover from our setbacks and keep going.

GC: People need to frame their resolutions. If they see them as part of their overall life goals, they will be more realistic. Start with your most realistic resolutions that will give the most immediate success – success brings long-term change. Focus on making one change at a time.

Write down your resolutions and the SMART strategies you will use to reach them.

S specific

M measurable

A attainable

R realistic

T timely

What should you do if you break your New Year’s resolution?

GC: Don’t beat yourself up or shame yourself. Talk with your support system about what took you off course and jump back into the flow.

CD: Setbacks are common. If you feel strongly about your New Year’s resolution, don’t dwell on the stumbling blocks. Maybe you need to look at your resolution and find out what is not working. Maybe you do not have a realistic goal, it might be that your plan for how to get to your goal isn’t realistic. Find out the reason behind why you have lost your motivation and find solutions to work around that. One of the best ways to get back on track is to connect with someone who is working toward the same goal. Knowing you are not alone in your challenge and having someone who understands is a powerful motivator.

What are the biggest pitfalls in making and keeping resolutions?

GC: Making too many resolutions or making resolutions that are too expansive to see results or are unrealistic for the life and circumstances you are living. For instance, it’s challenging to give up smoking if you live and/or work with smokers.

CD: One of the biggest reasons people stop keeping their New Year’s resolutions is they are not really ready to make a change in their lives, especially when this means letting go of a bad habit. Another reason people don’t keep their resolutions is the change they want in their lives is not internally motivated. This means that instead of making a change that reflects who they are on the inside, people make resolutions based on how they think things should be. Not only does this mean people lose their motivation to keep up the change but this can also be damaging to one’s self worth.

Time is another area people do not take into account when thinking about long-lasting change. It takes a long time for us to make a behavior a habit; it will take a significant amount of time to train our brains to think differently.

What advice can you give people trying to make real, positive changes in their lives?

GC: Start the process by clarifying your overall goals, purpose and mission of your life. See how the changes you are looking to make fit into your goals, purpose and mission. If the changes fit, you are more likely to stay with the changes until they become new habits. Also, you want people around you who love and who support you in accomplishing the change.

CD: What people need to remember is just because they have a setback on their resolution, it doesn’t mean that they should give up. Keeping a resolution is training your brain and body to do something different from what it is used to doing. This will take time, effort and energy that sometimes you feel you are unwilling or unable to give. Don’t let that distract you. Your New Year’s resolution should be a long-term change, it isn’t a goal you will achieve and then be done with it. When we change the way we look at resolutions understand why we want to make those changes, we are more likely to find success.

When Leo Pereida was 16, he dropped out of high school and moved out after a fight with his father. At 18, he tried cocaine for the first time. At 26, he discovered crack cocaine. When he was 33, he committed aggravated robbery. At 34, while “high as a kite,” he stood before a judge, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

On Saturday, Pereida will put on his black cap and gown and walk into the United Supermarkets Arena, “Pomp and Circumstance” playing in the background. Along with more than 2,300 other graduates, he will walk across the stage, shake hands with his dean, smile for the camera, toss his cap into the air and have a diploma with Texas Tech University embossed at the top. He is 50 years old.

The turning point in life, he said, came after being sentenced. He was sitting in solitary confinement when his faith in Jesus Christ, which for years had been drowned out by drugs, resurfaced. He fell to his knees, praying and crying.

Road to nowhere

Pereida is the ninth of 10 children. He grew up in a small town in Crosby County, but considers Crosbyton, where he fled at age 16 to live with his sister, his hometown. He struggled with high school, made friends who had a bad influence on him and had little direction in life.

Those friends weren’t the start of his drug habit, though. Two years later, while he was living in Ralls, his boss’s sister came to his house and asked if she could use his bathroom. When she wasn’t out after half an hour, he knocked on the door.

“She opened it and had needles in her hand and cocaine, then asked me if I wanted to try it,” he said. “That’s when my life went down the wrong way.”

For eight years, he lived for the next hit. Sometime in the chaos he met a woman, got married and had two children, but he could only control his addiction for a couple years around them before leaving his wife and kids. Sometime after that, friends introduced him to crack cocaine. He lived on the streets for seven years feeding his addiction before a woman convinced him to help her rob a motel. He ended up in jail, facing charges of aggravated robbery.

In the six weeks he was in jail, he went to Bible study and talked with other men who wanted to turn their lives around. He could do that too, he thought. He didn’t need the drugs.

“Well, as soon as I got out, I forgot all about it,” he said. “I went back to doing my drugs again. I spent a year out on bond, and then the day came that I had to see the judge. I’d been high for the last six or seven days and I went in front of the judge like that. He wasn’t happy with me.”

He was sentenced to 15 years for his crime, spent mostly in the Price Daniel Unit in Snyder. This time, Pereida determined to change. He found God, he said, and God helped him to make use of his time in prison, earning his associate’s degree and avoiding the prison gangs, including their supply of drugs.

“In prison all you do is either you study, work or hang out,” Pereida said. “You either do your time or your time’s going to do you.”

Going somewhere

After 10 ½ years, Pereida left prison, moved to Lubbock, found a job and enrolled at Texas Tech. At orientation, an adviser listening to his background suggested he major in CFAS. His experience would give him unique empathy and understanding for clients and their families.

On Sept. 23, 2013, he completed his parole, but he wasn’t done with the parole office just yet. Pereida did his internship at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, in the same parole office he’d once checked into.

“To be behind that line, and now I’m at the desk – it’s awesome,” he said with a smile.

Pereida contributed to the depth of the CFAS department, program director C. Nichole Morelock said.

“Leo truly appreciates the opportunity to be at Texas Tech, and that shows in his demeanor in class,” she said. “He is a quiet force in the classroom and is a positive influence on other students. I am very excited to see how he builds on his experience to continue impacting others.”

Life today is pretty good for the former junkie. After a series of part-time jobs that kept him solvent, though it took a toll on his grades, he’s now a foreman at Apple Country Orchards in Idalou. He’s back in touch with his children; his daughter, 24, and son, 22, are coming to his graduation.

“They’re really proud of me,” he said.

Pereida, however, said he couldn’t take much credit for where he is today compared to where he’s been.

“God gets all the glory for where I’m at today,” he said. “I’ve done nothing to earn it, and I’ve made it this far.”

Graduation means quite the payday for many college students, but those who aren’t careful may find themselves blowing through that congratulatory money with little or nothing to show for it.

Peer financial coaches from Texas Tech University’s unique Red to Black program offered advice on how to spend graduation money so it works for the student. Saving or investing means graduates can continue to enjoy those gifts long after moving into the working world.

Create an emergency fund

Nadia Marquez, a doctoral student in the Personal Financial Planning program, suggests putting some of the money into an emergency fund, which she said should be three to six months of living expenses that stays there until it’s needed for a real emergency. Although graduates likely won’t have enough for the entire fund right away, they can use graduation money as seed money and contribute monthly once they’re employed.

That fund can also be used to pay for moving expenses to a new job.

“That way you don’t have to dip into savings or borrow,” she said.

Prepare for your first job.

Think About Retirement

Graduates also could put the money into a retirement fund. Doctoral student Tao Guo suggests opening a Roth IRA. Roth IRAs differ from traditional IRAs in that payments to a Roth account are post-tax earnings, meaning the investor won’t pay taxes when he or she withdraws the money at retirement. A traditional IRA is pretax earnings, but the investor will pay taxes on the money upon retirement.

“The year when you graduate and start your first job can be a great opportunity to take advantage of Roth IRA account,” Guo said. “Contribution to the Roth IRA account is not tax deductible, but since you have really low income as a student, you barely have to pay any tax on it. The best part is your earning or investment return in the account is tax exempted when you withdraw the money.”

Prepare for your first job

For those who have an itch to spend their money, Marquez suggests those who still are looking for jobs invest in proper interview attire or appropriate workplace attire for those who have jobs lined up.

Guo also recommends looking ahead to the expenses associated with moving and taking on a new job, which will be the first full-time or professional job for many.

“Starting your first full-time job in a new city is very exciting, but there are quite a few places you need to prepay some expenses before getting your first paycheck,” Guo said. “Your landlord probably requires some deposit before your move in. You probably need to pay some installation fee to get your cable, or you need some new furniture and work clothes.”

Save for retirement and emergencies.

Save it

Money can go into a savings account or, for a slightly higher rate of return, open a certificate of deposit (CD). Earmark that account for a big purchase, like a down payment on a car or house or graduate school.

“It’s hard to resist the temptation of spending,” Guo said. “There is always something we want to buy, some party we want to go to. As long as we see a balance in our checking account, we tend to spend it. Saving in a CD or less liquid account creates a commitment device for you. Our rational side of the brain finds a way to constrain the emotional side of the brain.”

Texas Tech University will host fall commencement ceremonies Friday and Saturday (Dec. 12-13) at United Supermarkets Arena, where more than 2,300 students will graduate. The School of Law wraps up the weekend with its hooding ceremony Saturday at the School of Law Lanier Auditorium.

Mica Endsley

Mica R. Endsley, chief scientist of the U.S. Air Force and Texas Tech alumna, will speak at the commencement ceremonies. Kem Thompson Frost, chief justice of the 14th Court of Appeals of Texas and School of Law alumna, will speak at the law hooding ceremony.

Endsley received her bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering in 1982 from Texas Tech. She received her master’s degree from Purdue University and her doctorate from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She is the chief scientific adviser to the chief of staff and Secretary of the Air Force. She previously was president of SA Technologies in Marietta, Georgia. She served as a visiting associate professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics as well as an associate professor of industrial engineering at Texas Tech.

“This is a special moment in the lives of these graduates and on behalf of their fellow students, faculty and staff, I congratulate them on this wonderful milestone,” President M. Duane Nellis said. “Graduates of Texas Tech University leave here equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to make valuable impacts on our society. We are proud of all of our graduates – past, present and future.”

Frost received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas, her juris doctor from the Texas Tech School of Law in 1983, and her master of laws from Duke University School of Law in 2014. She was appointed to the 14th Court of Appeals in Houston in 1999 and was appointed chief justice in 2013. Frost, a Houston native and a sixth-generation Texan, practiced civil trial and appellate law for 15 years before assuming the bench. She serves on several boards, including the Texas Tech Law School Foundation and the Texas Center for Legal Ethics.